2016 Pride Marshals

GRAND MARSHAL

Claire B. Naughton of Foxborough, Massachusetts, was born and raised in Grand Rapids, Michigan. She is a graduate of Michigan State University. Claire taught Family and Consumer Sciences for 22 years at Attleboro’s Coelho Middle School. She also developed and taught a Sex Education program. Active in her teachers union, she was Grievance Chair and Vice President for 11 years. Claire subsequently taught High School in Warwick, Rhode Island until 2005, when she retired. Claire has been married to Dennis J. Naughton for 48 years, and is the mother of two grown sons, Matthew and Patrick.

Throughout her lifetime, she has maintained an interest in issues of individual rights and has been involved in The League of Women Voters, the Democratic Party, the Massachusetts Teachers Association, and the Bay State Stonewall Democrats, an organization advocating for the LGBT community within the Democratic Party. Claire ran for state representative in 2006.

HONARARY MARSHALS (Posthumous)

Bayard Rustin, was one of the most important nonviolent activists of the 20th century. Black, gay, and poor, he was raised with the Quaker values of his grandmother, who started him on a path to forge a more equitable and just world. A brilliant intellectual, a talented athlete, and a gifted tenor, Rustin began protesting racial segregation as a high school student, employing sit-ins, boycotts, and other peaceful means to raise awareness about social injustice. Working with peace groups like the American Friends Service Committee and the Fellowship of Reconciliation, he spoke out against war, while also urging those groups to address the inherent violence of racism and prejudice.

Despite his effectiveness as an advocate, his openness about his sexual identity led to his marginalization by these faith-based groups. While a staff member of the secular War Resisters League, hetraveled to Montgomery, Alabama to lend support to the boycott of city buses by the African-American community. He became a close advisor to the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., but remained largely in the shadows because of his sexual orientation. Organizing some of the most significant demonstrations of the period, including the Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom and the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, he gradually emerged as a public figure and a leading advocate for civil and human rights. Late in his life he spoke in behalf of LGBT rights and recounted his experiences as a gay man in the movement for social justice. Peter Dreier lists him as one of “The 100 Greatest Americans of the 20th Century.” Rustin was awarded a posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2013 by President Barack Obama.

Last December, the Boston labor and LGBTQ communities suffered the untimely loss of one of their most energetic and outspoken activists, Thomas V. Barbera. Since the late 1980s, with the formation of the Gay and Lesbian Activists Network (GALLAN), Barbera worked – out and proud – alongside fellow gay and lesbian union workers with the goal of enlisting the labor and LGBTQ rights movements in one another’s causes. In so doing, he played an instrumental role in the organization of one of the first receptions for gays and lesbians at the AFL-CIO offices in Washington, DC, as well as in the creation of the inaugural Pride at Work (PAW) conference, held in New York in 1993 in conjunction with the 25th anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising. He was the first-ever GALLAN/PAW delegate to the Greater Boston Labor Council and a member of the Massachusetts AFL-CIO Executive Board, which benefited from his honest, unapologetically queer voice.

In the 2000s Barbera joined the Service Employees International Union Local 509as the Community Organizer/Advocates Liaison. In this capacity, he endeavored to improve relationships with the disability community. Even with later limitations placed upon his own mobility and the required use of a wheelchair, Barbera would not be hindered in his continued advocacy for oppressed and disenfranchised people. Throughout his adult life, Barbera was as an active player in Democratic politics, on the state and national level. From his participation on the GLBT and Disability Outreach Subcommittees of the Massachusetts Democratic Party to serving as a founding board member of the National Stonewall Democrats, Barbera pursued his commitment to protecting and expanding the rights of workers and queer folks. While Barbera’s life was cut far too short, the spirit of his life-long dedication to fostering solidarity among the various fights for social and economic justice lives on in our community.

PARADE MARSHAL

Raffi Freedman-Gurspan, is an Associate Director in the Office of Public Engagement where she serves as the White House’s primary liaison to the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT community). She is also an Outreach and Recruitment Director in the Presidential Personnel Office. She is the first appointee in the Obama White House who is openly transgender.

Raffi previously worked at the National Center for Transgender Equality as Policy Advisor for the Racial and Economic Justice Initiative. Prior to moving to Washington, DC, Raffi was a Legislative Director in the Massachusetts House of Representatives; LGBT Liaison for the City of Somerville, Massachusetts and worked with the Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition. She also assisted in course and research work at Boston University’s Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies Program.

A graduate of St. Olaf College in Minnesota, Raffi was adopted from Honduras and grew up in Brookline, Massachusetts.

Boston Pride creates change and progress in society by embracing our community’s diverse history, culture, and identities, promoting community engagement and inclusivity, and striving for visibility and respect in unity.

Mission

Boston Pride produces events and activities to achieve inclusivity, equality, respect, and awareness in Greater Boston and beyond. Fostering diversity, unity, visibility and dignity, we educate, communicate and advocate by building and strengthening community connections.